ROME: Sicily Gov. Nello Musumeci called on the Italian government to declare a state of emergency after nearly 1,000 migrants landed in Sicily from North Africa since last Saturday.
“We cannot carry on like this. Sicily cannot be left alone to carry this burden. Everyone has to play a part, or we will face disaster,” Musumeci told Arab News after Italian news agency ANSA reported on the latest arrival to the island of Lampedusa, late Monday morning — a dinghy overcrowded with around 30 migrants, mostly from Tunisia.
On Sunday, 550 migrants disembarked in the Sicilian port from charity rescue ship Ocean Viking.
Most of them came from Bangladesh, Egypt, Eritrea, Mali and Morocco and were rescued by the NGO vessel from boats in distress in six rescue operations in the Channel of Sicily.
They had to wait for nearly one week in intense heat and crowded conditions on the ship before the Italian Coast Guard authorized the vessel to dock in Pozzallo.
A source in the Italian Coast Guard told Arab News that nearly 15 percent of the migrants who landed in Pozzallo tested positive for coronavirus disease (COVID-19), explaining that the circumstance was “alarming the local population, as the infection rate, in general, was on the rise.”
On Saturday, 257 migrants landed in the Port of Trapani after being rescued by the German-operated ship Sea-Watch 3.
Thirty Ocean Viking migrants tested positive for COVID-19, and the remainder went into isolation on the quarantine ship Azzurra, in Pozzallo.
In the local overcrowded reception center, police had to intervene to stop a fight between Moroccan and Sri Lankan migrants.
Musumeci said that the arrivals were a sign that the recent missions of Italian ministers to North African states were not yielding the desired objectives.
“The EU keeps turning its attention away from Sicily, where desperate people come to look for a better future that they cannot find in the present condition. We cannot be left alone, and we cannot go on like this,” he said.
Musumeci called on Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi to send a “strong signal” and declare a “state of emergency.”
“Otherwise, the dangerous mix of increasing numbers of migrants and the rise of COVID-19 infections in Sicily could become explosive,” he said.
